mercredi 11 juin 2003

Weird and very wonderful (mainly Beaty and Bilal) Avoid clicking on what's coming unless you really want to see a vulgar cartoon Bob Ullman did of a Mac enthusiast in 2001. I found that totally by accident when I was looking at Alternative Comics ... and that I discovered because I was buried in bizarre science. Such odd matter was drawn to my errant attention by a reminder from "a small, reluctant geek who by twisted turns of fate ended up very cute and young looking instead of scarred and intimidating" named Quinn. You see, I'm surprised that my general purpose oven including microwave still works after some of the treatment it has received (even to write that is probably to give it the kiss of death). Now I have learned from Quinn, at ambiguous (which she shares mainly with Robin), that my misadventures with the microwave are but a tiny fraction of the appalling things you can do. Among them, for instance, are the Bubbling Soap experiment and one involving Steam Propelled Grapes. Since both are among sites I've recently come across offering DivX 5 movies, I think I should attempt what has until recently been difficult and bring the DivX codec to my Mac (this may not be the best place to start, but I'll explore...) Anyway, Quinn's link to some often dangerous behaviour is itself but a miniscule part of 'Weird Science', the work of a one-man dynamo, if that's the word, in Seattle: William J. Beaty. Bill's place is a house of many rooms, where I could spend hours! And conceivably will. He says he eats "Indian, Thai, Japanese, & anything weird", which makes me thoroughly jealous in my Current Condition. (Of the latter, I've little to say except that as of Sunday, my insides became sheer and mostly liquid hell, compounded by a dose of serious "black dog" blues I couldn't stave off forever -- hence almost no activity here or anywhere else. The wildcat and one or two other people have pulled me through that for now: I am grateful beyond words...) I can scarcely face yet more pasta and rice, but have little choice, and walk past the several excellent Asian takeaways in this street praying that one of these weeks I will be able to enter them again! But back to Bill, who is far more interesting, with an online encyclopaedia all his own peppered with good quotes, such as: "Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman and a favourite I like to use when reproached at work about a corner I consider relatively tidy: "If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?" - Albert Einstein Mr Beaty adds one or two of his own for good measure, such as this excellent "advice": "Dump your TV set for a couple of years, it will make you... 'different.'" When I checked out his link to the 'Enigma Project', naïvely expecting something along the lines of cryptography and the machine, I instead found myself deep in "a Maryland-based association of scientifically trained and technically oriented individuals who investigate and document claims of unexplained phenomena". No. Frankly. What more can I say about Bill Beaty, save that if this kind of thing grabs you, his mind has many doors, but this might be the best to open first? He's also one of those 'best if viewed with any browser' chaps. Wish I could say the same of this humble log... I began with comics. And shall end this entry likewise. While I was either flat out or spaced out on Sunday, perhaps even asleep, Marianne perused the latest issue of Création Numérique (French), later to remark that she had no idea Enki Bilal was "such a nice man", given the dark weirdness of much of his work. Their featured June cover artist, he's a fabulous phenomenon. There's a first-class Enki Bilal site (also in French, but with loads of artwork), and bits and pieces about him (in English) at the excellent 'artbomb.net', the Harlequin Comics Page (see "Eurocomics"). The Roland Collection of films on art even offers Bilal video (in both QuickTime and Real format, as with most of its featured artists). 11:46:23 PM  link   your views? [] Audible progress: media software updates The riddles of QuickTime (QT) 3 (standalone installer entry page for Mac and Windows), which landed on my machine via the Software Update panel late last week, took some sorting out! I've been fiddling with this and the newish iTunes and I'm impressed by the MPEG-4 format and the quality of AAC audio. Decidedly impressed. But one swift experiment confirmed that converting the mp3 music files you have into the Advanced Audio Codec (AAC) format is not a good idea. Had I bothered to look, I'd have seen that Mac Rumors told us this back in April. Their clarification page still holds good for people confused by these formats. Meanwhile, TidBITS this month posted a helpful little entry about another aspect of QT 3: its support for 3GPP. Three what? This is "an extension of the MPEG-4 standard aimed at delivering rich media over wireless broadband networks (like Apple's AirPort) to a variety of wireless devices. (3GPP stands for 3rd Generation Partnership Project; Apple has collected together some basic information and pointers about 3GPP on its Web site. The format is seeing growing use among mobile phone and PDA users in Asia and Europe.)," Geoff Duncan tells us (and the Apple link he mentions is this one). I've yet to work out whether I have any use myself for the QT 3GPP component, but if I did, I'd download it here. As for iTunes 4, both news about it and praise for it are obviously plastered across every French Mac mag in sight and on site. But with one almost universal gripe. The likelihood that almost any of us will be able to buy stuff from the Apple Music Store any time soon, as opposed to simply listening to 30 sec soundbites, remains zero. When this month's SVMMac went to press, it reported that Apple hadn't even begun negotiations with the record majors this side of the Atlantic. Probably needless to add, I've not seen a word out of Steve Jobs' people in France either. So, short of piracy, we'll still stuck with 19.6 percent VAT on CDs (as well as DVDs, software, etc.). Oh well. I'm told that VAT in Sweden is 25 percent!! Audio Hijack, however, remains as invaluable as it was when first I wrote about it in March and the Pro version saw another update yesterday. Mainly bug fixes, according to the 'rogue amoeba' people, but including an important one, eliminating static in some QuickTime applications. 6:42:04 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.